You too can be an Xbox game developer

Stuart Corner
Monday, 14 August 2006 12:46

Business IT - Technology

Microsoft has launched a set of tools that it claims will enable hobbyists, students, indie developers and studios to develop games for the Xbox 360.
The move was announced by Chris Satchell, general manager of the Game Developer Group at Microsoft, in his keynote speech at Gamefest 2006, a Microsoft game developer event hosted by Microsoft in Seattle.

The product, XNA Game Studio Express, is abased on Microsoft's XNA game development platform and will be available free (by download from 30 August) to anyone with a PC running Windows XP.

According to Wikipedia, XNA is a set of tools, complete with a managed runtime environment, created by Microsoft to facilitate computer game design, development and management by freeing game designers from worrying about nuts and bolts boilerplate coding. It brings all aspects of game production into a single system. XNA was announced in March 2004, at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California and the first Community Technology Preview version released in March 2006.

By joining a "creators club" for $US99 per year, users will be able to build, test and share their games on Xbox 360 and access a range of game development resources. "This represents the first significant opportunity for novice developers to make a console game without a significant investment in resource," according to Microsoft.

A second XNA toolset geared toward game development professionals is scheduled to be available in the Northern spring of 2007. Microsoft claims it will "fundamentally change the way commercial games are developed."

Satchell claimed that a number of academic institutions - including University of Southern California, Georgia Tech College of Computing and Southern Methodist University Guildhall - were planning to include XNA Game Studio Express in their courses.